Pixie Post

Well the last day of September has been dealt to in great style. There was swimming of course...at Karori Pool, bright and early. While we prefer to swim at the Aquatic Centre in Kilbirnie, the Karori* pool is lovely and the change of suburb is a fine excuse to upgrade our breakfast venue. We ate at the Boutique Dining Cafe, a cafe much more stylish than the name suggests. The coffee is great, they happily push tables together for our large party, they remember who ordered what, the food is delicious and usually plentiful enough to satisfy ravenous swimmers. They have live jazz on Thursday nights, I'm sure it would be worth a visit. Many extra coffees were ordered this time, while the relay teams for the national short course championship (next weekend....eek!) were negotiated with military precision. Takes about 100 times longer to sort out the teams than it will to swim the races. Ha!

*(Dear reader who is not from around here, these are suburbs of my beloved Wellington, about 20 minutes apart, if the lights are right, at 7 am on a Saturday morning. Swimming at Kilbirnie is preferable because the pool is bigger, and not so busy, we don't usually swim til 8 am, and it's also closer to home for me. Every now and then some event at Kilbirnie means we must swim elsewhere).

Breakfast at the Boutique Dining Cafe

Later that day there were cocktails with 5 fabulous women at Logan Brown, one of Wellington's best restaurants, followed by their superb 'pre-theatre' dinner. Logan Brown is the kind of hi-brow place that wins major awards. It is perfect in every way, from the beautifully decorated 1920s former bank building it is housed in, the three tiny courses of the pre-theatre menu, the wine list, the doris plum daiquiris...if you have someone to impress, it's the place to go.

Chocolate mousse with raspberry sorbet, plum daiquiri and manhattan at Logan Brown

Now, although the night could have ended in fine style right there, it got even better. We went to see the 2006 World of Wearable Arts Show. You can see some of the entries in a slideshow here at Stuff. It was a truly amazing show with spectacular staging. It was music, dance and theatre. It was a little Moulin Rouge, alien ballet, greek theatre, a kids cartoon, pyrotechnics, acrobatics. It was sexy, laugh-out-loud funny, and made me want to dance. The pacific section was breathtaking. Suzie Moncrief, you're a bloody genius.

The winner, "The Love of Icarus", by Rodney Leong, made of 20,000 plastic collar stays